house afire

let's face it: a house burning down is pretty cool to watch.

you know, except for the part where you are looking at somebody's life trauma and you shouldn't be rubbernecking, but sometimes when there's a building that needs demolition it will be turned over to a local fire department for a training exercise so if you stop to watch that, there's no shame in standing around and watching.

which is what happened this sunday in waterbury.

we went by it a couple of times and at first i had no idea why there were so many police and then with the firemen and the boarded up house i thought maybe there had been a fire overnight and my, weren't they quick to board it all up but THEN we noticed (so hooray for our awesome powers of observation) that they were SETTING the fire and by the time we came back through downtown it was a pretty spectacular fully involved structure fire.

it was sort of a fireman party.

because while being a fireman is serious business, they like their toys and costumes and all the cool stuff that goes with it, so a planned burn means they got to go out and be all fireman-y and practice with the equipment on a real fire only nobody's out of a home and nobody gets hurt.

and i am using the term "fireman" even though there were a number of women on the squad, and at least one in a command position. and there was one cute boy, so small in his fireman suit! he had to have been just barely however old you have to be to sign up to be a fireman. he didn't look old enough to shave.

but that's good. kids like him are where tomorrow's competent and experienced firemen come from.

and i am in favor of competent and experienced firemen.

so it was awesome, standing there watching the house burn down.

and hot. it was plenty hot standing across the street and off a ways to one side, and depending on what part of the house was burning most, it was sometimes uncomfortably hot.

the firemen were working also on keeping the houses on either side wet so they didn't burn and i was having a hard time imagining having that conversation: we'd like to burn down this house next to you, but don't worry. we'll keep your house nice and wet the whole time.

it turns out that both of the houses on either side are owned by the same entity and presumably insured by the same carrier.

and in case you want to watch pretty much unedited film of the house burning, here's my video: